Any doubt that Republicans could take control of Congress vanished over the last two weeks, as an ominous set of polling data showed the floor continuing to drop from under the Democratic Party’s public image.

The starkest implication of that development is this: Both GOP officials and the country’s top political analysts have begun to believe that any ceiling on Republican gains has been effectively blown away, and even some comfortably Democratic seats could produce competitive sleeper races before Nov. 2.

Handicapper Charlie Cook didn’t just predict that Republicans would win “at least 40 seats.” He also raised the possibility that their gains could end up being “substantially more.” Stu Rothenberg allowed that “substantially larger GOP gains in the 45-55 seat range are quite possible.”

“Had Democratic hopes on economic revitalization materialized, it is easy to see how the party could have used its superior financial resources, combined with the tendency of Republicans in some districts and states to nominate ideological fringe candidates, to keep losses to the low 30s,” University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato wrote. “But conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer.”

That reality leaves Republicans facing a tactical question: Given how far Democratic fortunes have fallen, how far should the GOP push its luck?

The transformed political map has already given Republicans new targets of opportunity. Republican candidates have shown signs of life in parts of the country that were veritable slaughterhouses for them in 2006 and 2008. The GOP is likely to pick up House seats in New England, which sent an exclusively Democratic delegation to the 111th Congress. Nominees in Democratic-leaning states like Illinois, Oregon and Wisconsin could make talk of Republicans as a Southern regional party a distant memory.

“The Southern seats, which were going to be the tug of war, now look like the Republicans have all but claimed them,” said former National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds. “The real question is: What will the inroads be in the Northeast, the upper Midwest and the Northwest? How many of those become vulnerable? How many seats do they get in New York?”

Republicans, seeking to pick off every possible seat, have been scouring the map for possible sleeper races – elections that would not be remotely competitive in a normal election, but that could produce a surprise in the current environment. They’re looking to areas facing especially punishing economic conditions, and districts that were competitive for Republicans on a national level as recently as 2004, but that have dropped off the radar screen over the last two cycles.

Call it the search for the next Jim Ryun, the Kansas Republican who was ousted from a reliably GOP seat in a shocking 2006 upset by a Democrat who went on to serve just two years in the House.

Republicans have already talked up challengers in other seats that might otherwise be long-shots: Democratic Reps. Russ Carnahan of Missouri, Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Betty Sutton of Ohio are among those whose districts would typically be tough to crack.

In an even longer-shot category, the GOP is currently eyeing four seats President George W. Bush won in 2004, currently represented by Reps. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Charles Wilson of Ohio. Several other districts viewed as potential sleepers are places where John Kerry won no more than 51 percent of the vote, including seats held by Illinois Rep. Phil Hare, Washington Rep. Rick Larsen and California Rep. Jim Costa.

The National Republican Congressional Committee pushed out damaging press stories in the last week on Bishop, who POLITICO reported to have secured scholarships for his family through the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, as well as New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur was also the target of an NRCC release. All three won by landslide margins in 2008.

Reynolds argued that the expansion of the congressional battlefield represents “the vision of [John] Boehner and [Pete] Sessions, that 100 seats are in play,” come to fruition.

It’s not yet clear whether there will be any late-breaking races serious enough to draw financial resources from either party committee. Though the NRCC has already broadened its ad reservations, adding four new members to its list of targets, none of the sleeper prospects made the cut. And several Democrats voiced frustration with the spreading view that massive Republican gains may be inevitable, noting that many Democratic campaigns have only just begun to spend money.

“This thing has got two months to run and you can’t predict this right now,” said former Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Martin Frost, calling the odds of a House takeover “50-50 at this point.”

“The press is cooperating with the Republicans in trying to create the impression of a stampede when a stampede does not exist yet,” he charged.

Democratic pollster John Anzalone argued that talk of a GOP takeover – let alone a blowout – is premature, given the unsteady quality of many Republican campaigns.

“There’s still a billion or so dollars to spend,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. “I still like what we have in terms of messaging and contrasts. … The opposition research on some of these individual candidates is unbelievable.”

Still, after a pair of national polls last week showed Republicans leading the generic ballot by nine and 13 points among likely voters, it’s conceivable that some safe-seeming Democrats could be caught off guard in a wave on Election Day.

Among political handicappers, there is a new consensus that Republicans could far overshoot a simple House majority, and even some of the GOP’s more cautious political hands have become convinced that November will be a devastating event for the majority party.

Former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, who ran the NRCC for three cycles, ended up in his fair share of Democratic press releases earlier this year for dim prognostications about the GOP’s midterm prospects. As recently as July, he told POLITICO that for Republicans, winning “20, 25 seats is easy. After that, it gets inside the ten-yard line.”

Now, Davis believes Republicans will “absolutely take control of the House,” and said that only an “international incident or terrorist attack” would change the course of the campaign.

“There is nothing else – the numbers and the economy are not going to rebound,” Davis said this week, with the qualifier: “I don’t know which way that would play, by the way.”